The present invention relates to garment hangers.
It has become common in the clothing industry for a garment manufacturer to ship his goods to a purchasing retailer with the garments already hung on or otherwise affixed to hangers. The use of so-called ship-on hangers which often remain with the garment even after sale to an ultimate consumer provides many advantages only one of which is minimized handling of the garments by store employees and customers. Reduced handling decreases the probability of soiling, wrinkling or more serious damage to the garment prior to sale.
Multi-piece outfits and certain other varieties of clothing are sometimes sold together as sets or ensembles which might, for example, include a shirt-like top and a pair of slacks or shorts or a skirt. Such an arrangement is quite common in sales of garment sets meant for particularly young children or infants although this practice is by no means so limited. If the various garments comprising the ensemble or set are affixed on the same hanger, it is generally necessary for the customer to remove or otherwise manipulate one of the articles in order to view the other since conventionally known hangers support one of the garments in surrounding or overlying relation to the other. The necessity of removing or manipulating the clothing each time it is viewed by a customer will be understood to substantially increase the possibility of inadvertent soiling or other damage thereto.
As a consequence, the individual garments of an ensemble will often be displayed on separate hangers which, although initially tied or otherwise held together, can become separated from one another whereby the set is broken up. Employee time and labor is then required to identify and reunite the various articles of the separated set and, if the same cannot be located, the individual pieces must be sold separately, often at a loss to the retailer. In addition, the use of multiple hangers increases both hanger cost and the amount of retail rack space required for display of a quantity of garments.
It is, therefore, the desideratum of the present invention to provide a hanger suitable for retaining a plurality of garments such that each of the individual garments is positioned for unrestricted display.
It is a particular object of the invention to provide a unitary garment hanger for simultaneously supporting two garments so that each is clearly visible for inspection without movement or manipulation of the other.
It is another object of the invention to provide a unitary hanger for adjacently supporting two garments alongside each other whereby, when two garments are properly supported, the retention of one of the garments on the hanger prevents the release or removal of the other garment from supported retention thereon.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a garment hanger for supporting a plurality of garments in position for facilitated and non-manipulated display of each and which is unitarily moldable at low cost utilizing conventional methods and materials.
An improved garment hanger demonstrating objects and advantages of the present invention is comprised, in a preferred embodiment, of a unitary construction molded of a plastic material. The hanger includes a hook and a pair of shoulders outwardly, laterally extending in opposite directions from the hook. An arm extends laterally inward from the outwardly disposed end of each shoulder and carries a garment gripping means on the inwardly disposed end of the arm so that the hanger can support a first garment on its shoulders and a second garment retained by the arm-carried gripping means. The improved hanger of the present invention supports the two garments so that each is adjacently suspended therefrom and can be disposed along substantially parallel planes whereby each garment is unrestrictedly viewable from a respective side of the hanger without the necessity of moving or otherwise manipulating either of the garments.